Headline of the Day

Penis Costume Protester Prevails in Court

—Courthouse News Service

Yeah, I know this is from April, I was doing some bloggy house cleaning, and came across it again.

One could call it a, ahem, hard case. But ultimately, an Alabama judge found, not hard enough.

Fairhope Municipal Judge Haymes Snedeker acquitted Renea Gamble Wednesday of all remaining misdemeanor charges stemming from her decision to wear a inflatable 7-foot penis costume at an anti-Trump “No Kings” protest in October 2025.

Gamble walked out of the courtroom after three hours of testimony cleared of any wrongdoing, but her attorney said her arrest was traumatizing and she may consider legal recourse.

Seriously, in a nation of truck nuts, how is this an arrestable offense? 

"The Very Best People"

Rather unsurprisingly, it has been discovered that ICE Agent David Brouillette, who murdered Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine has a long history of domestic violence and mental illness.

This guy should never been allowed anywhere near any sort of law enforcement of security position. 

He shouldn't be a security guard, nor a meter maid, nor a bouncer at a bar.

The fatal shooting of an immigrant in Maine has renewed concerns about the Trump administration’s push to quickly hire officers for mass deportations, after a woman said her abusive ex-husband told her he was the officer who fired his gun.

Ashley Brouillette said her former spouse, David Brouillette, told her in a phone call that he is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday.

She identified him in video footage from the scene of the incident, which does not show the shooting itself, but does show two officers in the moments after.

David Brouillette also called his other ex-wife and told her the same thing, according to a person with knowledge of the exchange, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy.

………

DHS conducted a massive drive to recruit 10,000 enforcement officers last year. In recent weeks, the agency has ramped up street arrests of alleged undocumented immigrants, aiming for as many as 2,000 a day. Ashley Brouillette said her ex-husband told her in November that he’d accepted a job with ICE.

Newly hired officers received a shortened training course. Those with prior law enforcement experience were often given an even more accelerated timeline.

………

A review of court files, employment records and interviews with people who have known Brouillette for many years indicate he had worked off and on in law enforcement. He has also had volatile personal relationships, with him and his two ex-wives accusing each other of abuse and neglect.

“If you were to ask me whether I believe David Brouillette is capable of this level of extreme violence, my answer is unequivocally yes,” Lucinda Brouillette, David’s second ex-wife, said in a statement Saturday. “That belief is not based on speculation, but on my own lived experiences over many years.”

Ashley Brouillette said that on the same day her ex-husband told her he’d joined ICE, he left her a voicemail calling her a “disgusting, fat” expletive and saying that her throat should be slit. She shared the voicemail with The Washington Post.

……… 

Ashley Brouillette said her ex-husband was diagnosed with several mental health disorders as a young adult, and that his temperament and mental health issues worsened after joining the Army. The Post could not independently verify those claims. When he left the military, records show, he went on to work short stints in various law enforcement jobs, including as an officer at the Maine Department of Corrections from November 2015 to August 2016. 

So not surprised.  This sort of enshittification is a feature of the, "Very best people," that Trump hires.

Now Indict Them

Federal law enforcement is finally sharing data from the Good and Pretti murders with Minnesota law enforcement.

Good.  No go forth and indict the bastards. 

Months of effort between Minnesota’s state and federal law enforcement agencies led the Justice Department to turn over a substantial amount of evidence from the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during Operation Metro Surge, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Monday.

The evidence, which was exchanged with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) over the last two weeks without public acknowledgment by the federal government or Minnesota law enforcement officials, includes the SUV that Good was driving when she was shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross. It also includes hard drives of federal evidence like body camera footage and statements from immigration enforcement agents about the killings.

At a news conference, Moriarty said the new information will allow state investigators to be more thorough in determining whether or not to charge federal agents with crimes in connection with the killings.

 

Cover Them Up With Trash Bags

After years of misuse by the police, a 30%+ error rate, and rising public protests, the Los Angeles Police Department has elected not to renew their contract with Flock cameras.

Good.  Now address the remaining problem, that Flock will not remove the cameras and will continue to spy on innocent citizens while they lobby for a new contract. 

The Los Angeles Police Department on Saturday stopped working with a surveillance technology company over concerns about the data’s use, according to an LAPD official.

Flock Safety operates 138 pole-mounted cameras in Los Angeles, allowing authorities to track vehicles that have been reported stolen or are registered to known fugitives. It is one of a handful of vendors used by the city for automated license plate readers.

Flock has been criticized for sharing its data with state and federal officials. Advocacy groups worry that information could help President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

………

Dean Gialamas, LAPD’s chief information officer, told several news outlets that the LAPD is seeking more protections around the information collected by the agency.

“The sticking point is around having very clear terms about who owns the data, what happens with the data once they collect it,” said Gialamas.

He said the LAPD would stop using Flock “until we can get those data, privacy, security and sharing concerns ironed out through a contractual relationship.”

The LAPD signed a three-year agreement with Flock in July 2023 that was already set to expire Saturday.

………

Reports that Flock has shared license plate data with federal authorities, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has led smaller cities across the country to end their relationships with the company.


In Northern California, the city of Mountain View turned off its 30 Flock cameras in February after officials announced that federal and state law enforcement agencies had accessed city data in violation of the city’s policies.

………

Inspector General Matthew Barragan recommended in the audit that the department suspend the deployment of any new automatic license plate readers, known as ALPRs, and the execution of new contracts.

Any new contracts should go through the Board of Police Commissioners, regardless of whether the agreement includes an exchange of funds, according to the report.


“Contracts or agreements shall establish enforceable requirements governing data security, privacy, access controls, retention and auditing to protect Department ALPR data and ensure accountability for its collection, use and disclosure,” the report said.

Even if one supports the indiscriminate use of ALPRs in US cities (I do not) Flock is a toxic bad actor whose business model is secrecy and back loaded bribery to public officials.

Another Day, More Fascism

Federal prosecutors have charged anti-ICE 15 protesters with conspiracy and related charges for protests in and around Minneapolis.

I wonder what sort of f%$#ed up sh%$ the prosecutors pulled in the grand jury to get indictments.

It probably makes what happened in Chicago look like a cake walk.

Federal prosecutors have charged 15 Minnesotans who are accused of efforts to “violently oppose immigration law enforcement” during Operation Metro Surge protests.

Outside the Warren E. Burger Federal Building, where some of the defendants’ first appearances took place, protesters clashed with U.S. Marshals, who deployed gas, pepper spray and flash bangs at the scene.

A dozen of those charged were arrested. Numerous defendants were released later in the day.

The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office, alongside Homeland Security Investigations officials, said the charges stem from “conspiring to impede or injure federal officers and other offenses against members of two Minneapolis-based antifa groups.” Antifa, short for antifascist, has been a target of the Trump administration, with the president last year labeling it a domestic terrorist organization.

 

Today in Fascism

Ice attempted to raid the offices of lawyers representing migrant children.

Of course they did this without any warrants.

Cops don't get to seize lawyers records, but they don't care, because they are little more than a heavily armed gang. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents attempted to raid the offices of attorneys for unaccompanied migrant children this week, lawyers tell The Lever, the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s attempt to collect sensitive data on children in the U.S. immigration system.

As The Lever first reported last week, the legal services providers for unaccompanied migrant children — who represent the youth in deportation proceedings — have been locked in a standoff with the Trump administration over requests for sensitive case data on their clients.

Now, ICE agents are arriving at their doors.

Dozens of nonprofits and law firms around the country provide critical legal representation to migrant children under the Unaccompanied Children Program, which is funded by the Department of Health and Human Services. The program has become a central focus in the Trump administration’s ongoing targeting of immigrants.

………

Providing sensitive client data to the federal government could represent a serious violation of attorney-client privilege and put vulnerable children at risk, attorneys say. Already, the immigration courts are expediting children’s cases in an apparent attempt to deport children as fast as possible.

On Thursday, two agents with Homeland Security Investigations, the primary investigative arm of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, arrived at the Washington, D.C., offices of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, which represents unaccompanied minors.

According to the organization’s executive director, Michael Lukens, security guards turned the agents away when they did not present a valid warrant.

 Calling these people, "Good Germans," gives them too much credit.

Gee, Fascism Much?

Kash Patel's FBI just raided an Ohio group dedicated to helping minorities vote on bogus allegations of voting fraud. 

This is a clear attempt to intimidate minority voters.

FBI agents on Thursday fanned out across the state carrying out a raid and questioning employees of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a voting rights organization, a board member said.

Prentiss Haney said agents raided the organization’s Cleveland office, and more than 100 agents showed up at current and former employees’ homes. He said agents seized electronic devices including phones and computers. Agents had a search warrant for the raid on the Cleveland office, he said.

Haney said agents asked questions revolving around voter fraud, a false claim repeatedly pushed by President Donald Trump and administration officials that U.S. elections are rigged.

“It’s actually about voter intimidation and political intimidation,” Haney said. “They came in like mob bosses to scare people from engaging in democratic participation.”

If (hopefully when) the worm turns, a lot of people need to see the inside of a court for stuff like this.

Well, Trash Belongs in Trash Bags

As the backlash against Flock AI driven license plate readers grow, more and more municipalities are canceling their contracts.

They find two problems, canceling the contract is difficult because of their Byzantine nature, and even when canceled, Flock does not remove them, so the cameras remain on their poles, where anyone with a Flock contract (think ICE) can continue to use them.

Some towns have an interesting way of dealing with this, they are sending out government workers to cover the cameras with trash bags. (alternate link)

The city of Dayton, Ohio has covered its Flock automated license plate reader cameras with black trash bags in part because police there are unsure whether the cameras are still active and the city also doesn’t seem to know whether it is allowed to take the cameras down. The move comes after months of resident outrage, a scandal in which the city was sharing Flock camera data for immigration enforcement apparently on accident, and a $30,000 audit into how the cameras are being used. 

Joe Parlette, the deputy city manager of Dayton, said at a city commission meeting last week that the “Dayton Police Department agreed to work with Public Works to put bags over the cameras” as a stop-gap measure until Flock cameras could be removed entirely. I spoke to multiple people in Dayton who said they had seen bagged cameras in the last few days. The Dayton Daily News first reported on the baggings.

Dayton is not the first city to cover its Flock cameras with trash bags because they can’t figure out how to immediately terminate the use of the cameras. Late last year, the city of Evanston, Illinois also covered its cameras with trash bags while it was waiting for the company to remove them from the city. Cities around the country have been reconsidering their relationship with the surveillance company after reporting from 404 Media and local news outlets that showed data from the cameras was making its way to Immigration and Customs Enforcement through Flock’s national camera network.

Flock cameras are usually solar powered, so once installed, it costs more to take them down than it does to leave them there, particularly if the data can be sold to someone else.

Garbage bags are a decent solution to this dynamic. 

Demanding the Right to Murder Black Men

At the state convention Minnesota Republicans held a moment of silence for Derek Chauvan, who murdered George Floyd.

They are offended that white cops are not allowed to murder black men whenever they want.

The Minnesota Republican party’s decision to hold a moment of silence for Derek Chauvin, the former police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, has angered the state’s attorney general – who was the lead prosecutor in the case.

Keith Ellison, a Democrat, said Saturday’s gesture at the state Republicans’ annual convention in Duluth was “an act of profound cruelty” to Floyd’s family and “disrespectful” to Minnesota’s law enforcement personnel.

“This decision dishonors the memory of George Floyd and wounds his loved ones all over again,” Ellison said in a statement.

Alluding to how the murder had happened six years earlier almost exactly, Ellison added: “To honor the man convicted of murdering George Floyd – days after the very anniversary of that terrible day – is an act of profound cruelty to the Floyd family and to every Minnesotan who believes in accountability under law.

These are really truly awful people.

Support Your Local Police

It appears that an officer at ICE protests used the injury of a journalist to steal her bag full of photographic equipment.

At least time, he was charged.

A law enforcement officer in New Jersey was charged on Thursday with stealing the camera equipment of a photojournalist who was covering a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

The photojournalist, Angelina Katsanis, 25, dropped her camera bag after she was injured at the protest on Saturday, she said in an interview. The bag contained roughly $10,000 worth of equipment, according to a statement from the state attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

The bag was later tracked using an Apple AirTag to the home of Darryl Brown, 43, a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said. Sergeant Brown, of Sparta Township, N.J., had been deployed to Delaney Hall during the protest, prosecutors said.

………

A law enforcement officer in New Jersey was charged on Thursday with stealing the camera equipment of a photojournalist who was covering a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

The photojournalist, Angelina Katsanis, 25, dropped her camera bag after she was injured at the protest on Saturday, she said in an interview. The bag contained roughly $10,000 worth of equipment, according to a statement from the state attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

The bag was later tracked using an Apple AirTag to the home of Darryl Brown, 43, a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said. Sergeant Brown, of Sparta Township, N.J., had been deployed to Delaney Hall during the protest, prosecutors said.

………

Later that night, Ms. Katsanis and another photographer, who was on assignment for The Times, made their way to a nearby hospital using a wheelchair given to her by a medic at the scene.

From a hospital bed, she watched on her phone as the AirTag in her camera bag traveled across northern New Jersey — on the highway, then to a private residence, and then to a bar close to that home, she said.

Ms. Katsanis said her boyfriend and the other photographer went out to track the AirTag and found that it had been removed from her bag and was on the side of the road. She said that her name and contact information were still clearly written on the AirTag.

“That was a pretty clear sign to me that this was a theft and not just a law enforcement officer holding onto this bag for safekeeping,” said Ms. Katsanis, who reported the missing bag to the attorney general’s office.

This is likely far more common than is reported in the  press. 

How is This Not Dancing on Sailors' Graves?

When Kash Patel went to Hawaii last year, he insisted that it was not a vacation, but rather a working trip where he snorkeled around the wreck of the USS Arizona.

As an FYI, this is generally forbidden, with exceptions being made for surveys of the state of the wreck and for interring survivors of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, who have requested to be laid to rest there.

I did not think that the Trump Administration could get any more creepy and inhuman.

It appears that I was misinformed.

FBI Director Kash Patel has been caught in yet another eyebrow-raising side quest: a snorkeling excursion to a sunken battleship in Hawaii entombing hundreds of sailors and Marines.

The controversial official’s strange trip was almost a year ago, but leaked now amid mounting scrutiny of his activities in office.

When Patel flew to Hawaii last July, FBI news releases framed the visit as part of his “ongoing commitment to supporting frontline efforts and strengthening interagency partnerships,” noting meetings with local law enforcement and a walking tour of the Honolulu field office. He then went on to Australia and New Zealand.

But the FBI director returned to the island just days later for what government officials described in internal emails as a “VIP snorkel” around the USS Arizona, the Associated Press reports. The battleship was sunk during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and serves as a memorial and a war grave for more than 900 crew members.

Headline of the Day

To Protect And Swerve: NYPD Cop Has 547 Speeding Tickets Yet Remains On The Force 

—Streetsblog New York City, on the serial (to the point of being surreal) traffic offender NYC police officer

The fact that this guy has been caught multiple times speeding on residential streets, school zones, etc. yet remains a police officer indicates a problem.

I'm a bit of a cynic, but my guess is that he's used his law enforcement connections to get out of paying fines. 

Conservatively, the total fines for those speeding tickets is something north of 30 Grand. 

Is this public enemy #1?

James Giovansanti lives and works on Staten Island. Since 2022, traffic cameras have caught his pickup truck blasting through school zones or running red lights 547 times in that one borough. He received 187 camera-issued tickets in 2025 alone — an average of one every other day.

That record makes Giovansanti the second-most-reckless driver in the city. Because he pilots a 4,800-pound RAM 1500 truck at more than 41 mph across the island, he poses a unique danger to himself and his neighbors. Ticket data show a pattern of dangerous driving in a wide arc from Pleasant Plains to Tompkinsville.

And here’s what makes him a true enemy of the public: Giovansanti is an officer in the New York City Police Department — the agency supposedly in charge of keeping New Yorkers out of harm’s way.

………

Activists say that Giovansanti is a poster child for the urgency of passing the “Stop Super Speeders Act,” a pending bill in Albany that would force the worst repeat speeders to install a speed limiter in their vehicles. If such a law was already in place, Giovansanti’s truck would have been rendered unable to speed on Aug. 7, 2022, just months after he bought it. 

………

Records show that James Giovansanti, 33, reserves the bulk of his speeding for the borough’s densely populated North Shore. A traffic camera on Richmond Avenue and Monsey Place — the same block as P.S. 22, an elementary school that enrolls more than 700 students — issued 25 speeding tickets to the truck.

Another camera on Richmond Terrace and John Street ticketed the truck 50 times. A third camera on Richmond Terrace and Nicholas Avenue ticketed the truck 55 times. Those last two cameras are located just north of Port Richmond High School, which enrolls more than 1,500 teens. 

………

Giovansanti’s choice of car dramatically heightens these risks. An unmodified 2022 RAM 1500 weighs at least 4,775 pounds, measures at least 77 inches tall, and features an enormous, boxy and flat-faced hood. This design limits the driver’s ability to see pedestrians and cyclists and makes it far more likely they will drag a crash victim beneath their car’s chassis instead of throwing them onto its hood.

We could not determine whether Giovansanti has ever harmed someone by speeding. But the circumstantial evidence is not reassuring: The right side of his truck is visibly damaged, and he refused to answer a straightforward question about his collision history.  

Support your local police.

Headline of the Day

Patel’s Proving A Heavy Bourbon for Trump 

—The Status Kuo, Ka$h Patel's many excesses during his tenure at the FBI.

Quoting the old Japanese proverb, "バカにつける薬はない." (There is no medicine for stupidity.)

As I wrote about last month, The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick published a blockbuster investigation of FBI Director Kash Patel based on over two dozen current and former FBI officials, detailing what the magazine described as his “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences.” The report alleged that meetings were delayed because of late-night drinking, that senior Justice Department officials were alarmed by his conduct, and that Patel was often unreachable.

Patel’s allies said it was all fabricated. The FBI pushed back. And a reasonable person might have thought, “Okay, lay low. Let it blow over. Don’t make it worse.”

Kash Patel is not a reasonable person.

The account gets far weirder from there. 

This is a Feature, Not a Bug

Is anyone surprised that police are using automated license plate readers to stalk their former romantic partners?

I'm not.

Police have routinely done this with other data sets going back decades.

In fact, I would argue that giving cops the ability to do this is a large part of why police like Flock cameras and their ilk so much. 

The cops never change. Only the tech toys do.

That’s the upshot of this report from the Institute for Justice, which has been tracking what cops have been tracking now that they have always-on access to massive networks of security cameras, including Flock Safety’s controversial offerings, which also include automatic license plate readers (ALPR).

The proliferation of police surveillance has led to repeated abuse. One shockingly common form: police officers using ALPR camera networks to keep tabs on their romantic interests, including current partners, exes, and even strangers who unwittingly caught their eye in public.

An Institute for Justice review of media reports has identified at least 14 cases nationwide of officers allegedly abusing ALPR data this way, with the bulk of those incidents happening since 2024.

This is the same stuff that cops have been doing for years. Access to criminal databases, drivers license info, and anything else swept up by government entities has resulted in numerous cases of abuse.

Maybe what cops need is not better spying tech, maybe what cops need is better people on the force.

Headline of the Day

The Justice Department Sides With the Ku Klux Klan

—The New Republic, on the disgraceful and corrupt prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center

As an FYI, the DoJ is accusing the SPLC of lying to donors because they used their money to pay confidential informants, which literally everyone who donated to the organization knew that they did this.

Also, they accused the SPLC of creating false racist organizations and false racist acts because there is no racism anymore, except against rich white guys. 

It's like a perverted version of Gilbert and Sullivan:

Ko-Ko. Not yet. You see, flirting is the only crime punishable with decapitation, and married men never flirt.

This is an accurate description of that behavior. 

The United States did not always have a Department of Justice. President Ulysses S. Grant founded it in 1870 to help suppress the Ku Klux Klan in the Southern states and enforce federal civil rights protections for formerly enslaved Americans. On Tuesday, Justice Department officials announced what may be the first Klan-friendly prosecution in the department’s history.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, is one of the most influential civil rights groups in the nation. Founded in 1971, it has spent the last five decades monitoring, documenting, and exposing hate groups and violent extremists. The group rose to national fame in the 1980s by financially breaking the modern Klan through strategic lawsuits on behalf of its victims. The SPLC’s most persistent targets have been white nationalist groups like the Klan and various neo-Nazi gangs, but its work has expanded over the years, as well. (More on that later.)

Trump Justice Department officials struck a much different note about the SPLC’s work when announcing the indictment. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed on Tuesday that the SPLC was “manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

This is what happens when lawlessness is excused in the name of, "Looking forware, not back."

Headline of the Day

Looks Like A Police State To Me, Says Federal Judge Handling Migrant Detention Cases

—Techdirt, quoting Judge Sanket Bulsara of the Eastern District of New York.

Money quote:

And that leads to the judge comparing ICE’s actions to those of a police state: 

This practice of after-the-fact arrest warrants can be called many things—illegal, improper, and unconstitutional, among them. But whatever label one wishes to apply, the practice is fundamentally at odds with and offensive to lawful, constitutional behavior in this country. “An arrest is not justified by what the subsequent search discloses[.]” A contrary rule—the one that the USAO here defends by backing detention and opposing release—“would obliterate one of the most fundamental distinctions between our form of government, where officers are under the law, and the police-state where they are the law.” 

Police and law enforcement cannot operate as roving bands, detaining individuals, figuring out the reasons later, and papering over their failures afterwards. This sadly is the practice in many other parts of the world. But in the United States, the law prohibits such conduct.

(Emphasis original) 

Everyone involved at any level in these actions should be barred from law enforcement and the legal profession for the rest of their life.

 

A Small Win

The DHS funding bill finally passed both houses without funding ICE or the Border Patrol.

Johnson said no funding bill without funding those two agencies, but he blinked. 

The House on Thursday passed stalled legislation reopening the Department of Homeland Security, ending a record 76-day shutdown at the agency and resolving uncertainty over whether thousands of federal security workers would be paid in May.

The voice vote after a brief debate brought to a close a bitter partisan fight spurred by President Trump’s immigration crackdown and the tactics of federal immigration officers who fatally shot two U.S. citizens during immigration roundups in Minneapolis earlier this year. Negotiations between the White House and Democrats who were demanding new restrictions on the officers went nowhere, leading to an impasse that cut off funding on Feb. 14. 

………

Senate Republicans and Democrats had struck a deal on April 1 to fund everything except for the immigration enforcement agencies, vowing to approve that money separately in a bill that Democrats could not block. But the House G.O.P. declined for weeks to act on the measure, with conservatives refusing to vote for a bill that did not fund ICE and border patrol.

House leaders finally took it up on Thursday ahead of a 12-day break, and after the White House requested that the bill be passed immediately.

The bullies blinked. 

 

Support Your Local Police

In their latest antic, the PBA is suing the Civilian Complaint Review Board for not following a law that was repealed.

Specifically, they are suing the CCRB because the police union wants it to follow the now repealed section 50-a of the state civil rights law, which made law enforcement misconduct proceedings confidential.

They've already lost this once before.

How about sanctions this time?

New York City's largest police union filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the City agency tasked with investigating police misconduct, accusing the agency of "disseminating… inflammatory, stigmatizing, and life-altering unsubstantiated accusations… tied to identifiable police officers."

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan by the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York, alleges that the CCRB is violating officers' rights by allowing the public to see the agency's closing reports of investigations into police misconduct—specifically, the part of those reports that shows the type of misconduct the officer was investigated for, in cases where, for whatever reason, the agency didn't make a final determination that the misconduct took place. That information, the PBA contends, should be secret from the public—at least in instances where officers are accused of lying to investigators, sexual misconduct, or bias-based policing.

………

Hell Gate broke the news last year that the CCRB had a previously undisclosed policy of obscuring the nature of some charges against officers in public-facing data. When police officers are accused of making untruthful statements to investigators—or of sexual misconduct, or of racial profiling—and the board doesn't substantiate those allegations, it reclassifies them in the City's Open Data Portal to something more vague and innocuous-sounding.

………

The PBA, which represents rank-and-file cops across the NYPD, clearly interpreted the revelation differently. Rather than faulting the oversight agency for mystifying its own data to protect cops' reputations, the union faults the agency for offering a less-than-complete whitewash, allowing the public to see the original charges if they request investigation records through the state's Freedom of Information Law.

The law has changed.  Police will be held (a little bit more) accountable.

Get over it. 

From the Department of, "About F%$#ing Time"

This picture should refresh your memoryThe Ramsey County Minnesota District Attorney and Sheriff are investigating the detention of ChongLy “Scott” Thao by ICE as a possible kidnapping.

Thao, a US citizen, was dragged out of his house wearing a pair of shorts and Crocs by ICE agents after they broke down his door.

It was all without a warrant.

Ramsey County is investigating the January arrest of a St. Paul Hmong American man by federal immigration officers as a potential case of kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment, officials announced Monday. 

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi and Sheriff Bob Fletcher said at a news conference they will pursue information from the Department of Homeland Security that they need for their investigation into the arrest of ChongLy “Scott” Thao on Jan. 18, calling it a violation of the U.S. Constitution to forcibly remove Thao without probable cause.

………

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers bashed open the front door of Thao’s East Side home at gunpoint without a warrant, then led him outside half-dressed in freezing conditions.

………

Thao later told the Associated Press that his daughter-in-law alerted him that ICE agents were banging at the door. He told her not to open it. Masked agents then forced their way in and pointed guns at the family, yelling at them, Thao recalled.

“I was shaking,” he said. “They didn’t show any warrant; they just broke down the door.”

Thao, a naturalized U.S. citizen and Hmong elder, was quickly handcuffed and was seen on video being led outside bare-chested in freezing temperatures, wearing nothing but Crocs, boxer shorts and a children’s blanket. A photo of the incident drew immediate attention on social media.

 Throw the book at them.

Justice

Rapper Afroman, best known as the artist who produced the song, "Because I Got High," just prevailed in a defamation suit filed by Adams County sheriffs for his mockery of them for breaking into his house, disconnecting his security cameras, and stealing his money. (See here for my earlier thoughts on this)

Afroman took the incident, and made lemonade, or possibly lemon pound cake, over, and the sheriff's deputies decided that being help up for mockery for their egregious and unprofessional behavior hurt their delicate feelings, so they sued, and lost.

Before Friday, Grammy-nominated musician Afroman might have been best known for his Y2K hit, “Because I Got High.” But now he has a new claim to fame, as the man who fought the law—and won. The southern Ohio resident, whose legal name is Joseph Edgar Foreman, prevailed in a nearly $4 million lawsuit filed against him by seven police officers in 2023, all of whom claimed that songs and videos he released regarding a raid on his home were defamatory and an invasion of their privacy.

The saga began on August 21, 2022, when a group of Adams County, Ohio, Sheriff's Office deputies raided Foreman's Winchester, Ohio home, which is about 55 miles east of Cincinnati. According to a Fox 19 report from the time, police had obtained a warrant to search the residence based on “probable cause that drugs and drug paraphernalia were located on the property and that trafficking and kidnapping had taken place there.”

Foreman, who was not home at the time, posted security footage of the raid to Instagram, including a door-busting breach into the kitchen, followed by a police pause at a dessert stand populated by what we'd later learn was a lemon pound cake. An additional video showed police rifling through his closet, as one law enforcement agent asks “is he a Raiders fan? Still?”

According to Foreman, police confiscated a joint, a vape pen, and $5,031 in cash. (The latter was returned.) He was never charged. A spokesperson for the Adams County Prosecutor’s Office later admitted that the raid “failed to turn up probative criminal evidence.”

Well, it was about $400.00 short, the cops, "Misplaced," the cash.  Yeah, sure. 

………

In the wake of the event, Foreman says he thought about suing the police, but decided against it. "I asked myself, as a powerless Black man in America, what can I do to the cops that kicked my door in?" he asked NPR. “And the only thing I could come up with was make a funny rap song about them and make some money, use the money to pay for the damages they did and move on.”

The result was Lemon Pound Cake, an album released by Afroman in 2022. Tracks such as “The Police Raid,” “Why You Disconnecting My Video Camera,” and the title song retold details of the breach in an exaggerated, hyperbolic, and oft-comedic fashion. Another song, “Will You Help Me Repair My Door," was accompanied by a video that included footage from the breach, set to lines like “Did you find what you were looking for/ Would you like a slice of lemon pound cake/ You can take as much as you want to take/ There must be a big mistake.”

………

It wasn't until this week that the trial began, with Foreman in attendance in a suit patterned with the American flag. He took the stand on Tuesday, WCPO reports. “All of this is their fault,” Foreman said. "If they hadn't wrongly raided my house, there would be no lawsuit, I would not know their names, they wouldn't be on my home surveillance system, and there would be no songs ... my money would still be intact."

“After they run around my house with guns and kick down my door,” he said. “I got the right to kick a can in my backyard, use my freedom of speech, turn my bad times into a good time.”

The next day, the jury reached its verdict after six hours of deliberation. "It's been an emotional case, it's been a well-tried case," the judge said. “In all circumstances, the jury finds in favor of the defendant. No plaintiff verdict prevailed. So the matter will be concluded with defense verdicts.”

I'm not sure what he can do legally in response to what was obviously a SLAPP suit, but there is clearly material for another album in this.